[ALBSA-Info] The Independent

[Agron Alibali]

The Independent (London) 


March 17, 2001, Saturday 

First Edition; COMMENT; Pg. 3 

WE CAN'T LET BALKAN VIOLENCE SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL
AGAIN 

Fergal Keane 




iwAT THE height of Slobodan Milosevic's expulsions of
ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, I was despatched to
Macedonia to "watch" the situation from the border.
"Watch" meant interviewing one desperate refugee after
another as they came across the frontier with stories
of dispossession and violence. We would watch them
streaming past the Serb border guards, weeping and
fearful, and then boarding buses for the refugee camps
which the international community had created outside
the Macedonian capital, Skopje. "Watching" also meant
keeping a close eye on what was happening in Macedonia
itself. 

There had been a few incidents of Nato vehicles being
stoned; I remember particular hostility towards
Westerners in some of the out-of-the-way villages
leading to the border. Macedonian police had shown
themselves ready to use rough tactics with the
refugees. I spent two days pursuing a convoy of women
and old men who had been rushed on to buses at the
border and driven through the night to be dumped in
Albania. The Macedonians did not want a vast Kosovo
Albanian refugee population to disturb the ethnic
balance inside their own borders. 

I vividly remember a conversation with a Macedonian
driver who took me to the border one morning. We could
hear the pounding of Nato bombs falling in the
distance and my driver started to ruminate about the
war. Like many Macedonians he had sympathy with the
Serbs and resented Nato's presence. But what induced
his most visceral fury was any mention of Macedonia's
Albanian population. My driver was a fearful man. He
had felt the tremors of Yugoslavia's collapse from
Slovenia in 1991 to Croatia, through Bosnia and now
Kosovo. And like many of his countrymen he prayed that
the madness would be stopped at Macedonia's borders. 

In this past week the wars of the Yugoslav succession
have, however, finally shattered Macedonia's fitful
peace. There was a terrible sense of deja vu watching
my colleague Angus Roxburgh's gripping report from
Tetovo on the 10 o'clock news. The gunfire in the
hills, the fearful faces of the townspeople... It was
familiar in a sickening way to the first angry blasts
of Serb nationalism a decade ago. The guns in the
hills outside Tetovo are those of Albanian
nationalists. They nurse an historic sense of
grievance against all the ruling powers in the region.
The governments of Macedonia and Yugoslavia are seen
as enemies to the rights and aspirations of the
Albanian people. 

And boy, what an irony on the borders of Kosovo and
Serbia! The men the Western allies called murdering
scum are now our allies, helping us defend the buffer
zone against the Albanians we once called "freedom
fighters". It is reminiscent of one of those Private
Eye fake adverts: "In common with certain other
publications we may have given the impression that the
Serb army is a bunch of thieving, raping, murdering
thugs the likes of which has not roamed Europe since
the Thirty Years' War. We are now happy to set the
record straight and say that the Serb army is in fact
a loyal ally and friend in the fight against the
expansionism terror of the KLA and its running-dog
allies who are in fact a bunch of murdering etc
etc..." 

The EU's special envoy Carl Bildt has spotted the
similarities and warned a few days ago that we were on
the brink of a new Balkan war. If that happens, guess
where our troops will be lined up? Alongside the
Serbs, of course. The historical absurdities are
obvious and easy target for any commentator. Less
simple is setting out a realistic alternative to the
West's Balkan dilemma. 

Our policy-makers could begin by examining the causes
of the crisis. They are in part a consequence of the
liberation of Kosovo, but it would be foolish to think
that pre-war Macedonia was a model of ethnic
tolerance. There was a peace but Albanian resentment
has been evident for many years. Given a choice, most
Albanians - as past elections have shown - will vote
for a moderate option. This was true in Kosovo after
the war when Ibrahim Rugova won the vote, and it is
equally true of Macedonia. But the tiger which was
unleashed by Milosevic's persecution of Albanians in
Kosovo cannot so easily be restrained. 

The Kosovo Liberation Army and its Macedonian
offshoots learned some hard lessons from Milosevic,
the lessons of Balkan power: with weapons and enough
ruthlessness you can terrorise the other ethnic group
into departing the village, the valley, the city.
Perhaps the key difference - and one which Western
policy-makers need to remember - is that the KLA,
unlike the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s, does not have a
powerful external backer. Albania itself is in no
position and has little inclination to lend military
or economic assistance to the guerrillas, and in
Kosovo the mass of the population has already shown
that it wants peace. 

Nor can any of the Albanian armed groups operating in
the borderlands claim to be fighting a tyrannical
occupying force. Grievances need to be addressed. But
not with guns and bombs. In this context, what is the
West to do? One obvious possibility is for
international forces to help stabilise Macedonia
quickly before there is a descent into all-out war.
Granted, the presence of international peacekeepers on
the Kosovo side of the border has not deterred
Albanian guerrillas from operating; it is wild
territory and ideally suited to guerrilla operations.
But without being able to move across the borders the
international forces are hamstrung. 

We cannot say that we have no strategic or moral
interest in preventing another big Balkan war. Of all
the countries which have seen bloodshed in the past
decade, Macedonia could prove the most dangerously
placed in strategic terms. Our EU and Nato allies the
Greeks, as well as the Bulgarians, have a strong
interest in ensuring that the violence is contained.
That could conceivably prompt a military intervention
and a widening Balkan conflict. And this is without
even starting to contemplate the consequences for
Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. 

The West messed up the immediate aftermath of the
Kosovo war. By failing to provide the promised number
of police it helped to foster a climate of lawlessness
and intimidation. The crucial message of all ethnic
wars is that winning the battles is invariably easier
than managing the peace that follows. In Kosovo, the
short -termism that governs foreign policy in the West
- so terribly acute in the case of the Americans -
gave an impression of weakness that the extremists
have been quick to exploit. The news that Mr Bush is
threatening to reduce the American presence in Bosnia
will be music to the ears of the gunmen in the hills
around Tetovo. Sarajevo may be a long journey away,
but the guerrillas will understand that America under
President Bush has little stomach for putting its men
in the way of any Balkan danger. 

And so Europe must be prepared to increase its
commitment in Macedonia - in terms of diplomatic and,
if need be, peacekeeping support. The alternative is
to watch while the violence escalates and, with the
inevitable heightening of bitterness and mistrust,
becomes a real ethnic war. The Albanians of Macedonia
and of Kosovo do not want this. The majority of the
people of the Balkans do not want it. After the last
10 years, they deserve better. 

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent 


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